At this year’s ITS European Congress in Istanbul, one message came through across sessions, projects, and discussions: inclusive mobility cannot be treated as an add-on. It must become a foundational principle in how cities design transport systems, public spaces, digital tools, and decision-making processes.

Across several sessions, particularly SIS51, SIS54, and SFS7, researchers, practitioners, municipalities, and innovators highlighted the urgent need to move beyond traditional transport planning approaches and toward mobility systems designed with people, not simply for them.

For InclusiveSpaces, these discussions strongly resonated with our core principles: intersectionality, co-creation, early engagement, continuous feedback, and community-led innovation.

Co-creation must start from lived experience

Many projects presented at the congress demonstrated that inclusive mobility begins by listening to lived experiences.

The StreetsForAll initiative shared how co-creation activities in the Romanian city of Cugir helped residents rethink public space and mobility. Their “Green Mobility Fridays,” where cars are removed from parts of the city, emerged directly from local engagement and are now moving toward wider deployment. The project showed how even temporary interventions can shift perceptions and encourage people to reclaim streets as social and inclusive spaces.

Similarly, the ELABORATOR project (through the Urbana initiative) explored the “mobility of care” concept in Trikala, Greece. Workshops with women from urban, peri-urban, and rural areas revealed how mobility patterns are deeply shaped by caregiving responsibilities, safety concerns, and accessibility barriers. These insights contributed to the development of a gender-inclusive mobility roadmap, an example of how participatory planning can uncover realities often overlooked in conventional transport models.

The importance of lived experience was echoed repeatedly throughout the congress: if vulnerable users are not included from day one, mobility solutions risk reproducing exclusion.

Inclusive mobility is also social innovation

Several speakers emphasised that innovation in mobility is not only technological, it is social.

The SMALL project highlighted the importance of co-innovating mobility solutions together with communities and ensuring long-term sustainability beyond pilot phases. Discussions around business models, volunteer engagement, and long-term accessibility demonstrated that inclusion requires continuity, not just experimentation.

Likewise, the AMIGOS project stressed that digital tools for equitable access must be designed with vulnerable users, not merely targeted toward them. Workshops involving vulnerable groups from the earliest stages were presented as essential to creating tools and public spaces that truly improve accessibility for all. A key message throughout the discussions was that inclusivity cannot be added at the end of a project as a corrective measure or final validation step. Instead, inclusive thinking must shape the design process from the very beginning, from defining problems and identifying user needs to testing, implementation, and evaluation. When vulnerable users are only consulted late in the process, many barriers have already become embedded into systems, technologies, and public spaces. Designing inclusively from the outset helps ensure that mobility solutions are not only accessible, but genuinely usable, equitable, and responsive to diverse lived experiences.

One particularly powerful message from the discussions was that transport budgets should increasingly prioritise people who walk, rather than continuing to centre cities around cars. Importantly, several discussions also reflected on the language used in mobility planning itself. The term “pedestrian” often evokes the image of an able-bodied person moving through space in a standardised way, while the expression “people who walk” is broader and more inclusive. It recognises the diversity of bodies, mobilities, and lived experiences involved in moving through cities, including older adults, people using mobility aids, parents with strollers, children, people with temporary injuries, and many others navigating public space differently. This reframing of mobility as an issue of justice, not just efficiency, appeared throughout the congress, encouraging a shift from designing transport systems around vehicles toward designing cities around people in all their diversity.

Intersectionality cannot remain theoretical

From the InclusiveSpaces perspective, one of the most important themes emerging from the congress was the growing recognition of intersectionality in mobility planning. Intersectionality recognises that people experience mobility systems differently depending on how multiple aspects of their identity and lived experience interact, including gender, disability, age, income, ethnicity, caregiving responsibilities, geography, and digital access. Rather than treating these characteristics separately, an intersectional approach acknowledges that barriers often overlap and reinforce one another. For example, the mobility experience of an older woman living in a rural area may differ significantly from that of a younger urban resident, just as a person with disabilities may face additional exclusion when digital-only mobility services become the norm.

Speakers repeatedly pointed out that aggregated data often hides inequalities. Participants stressed the importance of stratified data collection methods that capture the realities of different user groups, including women, people with disabilities, older adults, rural populations, and low-income communities.

A striking reminder came during the discussions: people with disabilities represent nearly 30% of the population when considering permanent, temporary, situational, and age-related impairments. Yet their needs remain significantly underrepresented in mobility planning processes.

Participants also noted how GDPR is sometimes used as an excuse for the absence of inclusive data collection, rather than a challenge to be responsibly addressed through better methodologies and governance frameworks.

For InclusiveSpaces, this reinforces a key lesson: intersectionality must move beyond rhetoric and become embedded in data practices, governance structures, and policy implementation.

Inclusive decision-making requires institutional change

Another recurring topic was who actually makes mobility decisions, and whose voices are excluded.

Projects such as UPPER highlighted the need to integrate inclusivity considerations directly into Sustainable Urban Mobility Plans (SUMPs), while discussions across sessions emphasized the importance of multi-departmental cooperation and participatory governance.

Researchers, workshop participants, public authorities, and vulnerable communities all need meaningful roles in shaping mobility systems. Public consultations alone are not enough if they fail to engage marginalised groups effectively.

Several speakers stressed that many existing consultation processes still do not adequately reach vulnerable populations. Inclusion requires more proactive and accessible engagement formats, supported by technical assistance, community-building, and long-term trust.

The future-focused SFS7 session further explored how accessibility must extend across the entire journey (from point A to point Z) including digital accessibility, financial accessibility, and physical accessibility. Discussions around MaaS solutions highlighted a critical question: what happens to users without smartphones or digital literacy?

Designing inclusive mobility therefore means designing for all.

A shared vision: leaving no one behind

Despite the diversity of projects and contexts presented during the congress, a common vision emerged.

Inclusive mobility is not solely about transport infrastructure. It is about public space, governance, digital inclusion, affordability, care, participation, and dignity.

It is about ensuring that no one is left behind.

For InclusiveSpaces, the ITS European Congress reinforced the importance of building communities of practice that connect researchers, practitioners, policymakers, and citizens around this shared goal. Co-creation cannot be occasional. It must become continuous. Inclusion cannot be symbolic. It must shape every stage of planning, implementation, and evaluation.

As cities continue to evolve, the challenge ahead is not whether inclusive mobility is possible, but whether institutions are willing to redesign systems around the realities of all people who use them.